WATANI International
25 January 2009
The Science Supercourse Project was launched earlier this month at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA). Dr Ismail Serageldin, Director of the Bibliotheca; Professor Vinton Cerf, Google’s Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist; and Professor Ronald LaPorte, Professor of Epidemiology, Pittsburg University, announced the launch at the BA Conference Centre Great Hall.
Through a collection of 100,000 golden PowerPoint lectures from scientists around the world the Supercourse Project, Dr Serageldin explained, aims at building a knowledge network in four main scientific domains namely: Medicine, Engineering, Environment and Agriculture. He noted that the Third Global Revolution, that is, the Information Revolution, offers new opportunities for the South, but only if the South can master science education, and hence the Science Supercourse is significant. He also talked about the importance of “dreaming to change the world”.
Professor LaPorte said that the Supercourse dream dates back to six years ago, when he visited the BA before its official opening and made up his mind that it is the venue where the Supercourse Project should take place. The Opening Session was followed by a Plenary one, in which Vinton Cerf gave a presentation entitled “The Future of Information and Communication Technology”. He discussed different challenges to ICT, including its still limited access; until mid 2008, only 20 per cent of the world population had access to the Internet. Another challenge would be the legal framework, that of intellectual property, digital signatures and privacy among others.